Skip to main content

In section 33 of "Song of Myself," how is the skipper of the boat depicted?

You are referring to the skipper who rescues passengers off the drifting wreck of a steamship. The skipper is portrayed as a courageous hero:



I understand the large hearts of heroes,
The courage of present times and all times,
How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steamship, and Death chasing it up and down the storm,
How he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch, and was faithful of days and faithful of nights,
And chalk'd in large letters on a board, Be of good cheer, we will not desert you;
How he follow'd with them and tack'd with them three days and would not give it up,
How he saved the drifting company at last,
How the lank loose-gown'd women look'd when boated from the side of their prepared graves,
How the silent old-faced infants and the lifted sick, and the sharp-lipp'd unshaved men;
All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine,
I am the man, I suffer'd, I was there.



The skipper’s courage is expressed through his care for the victims on the wreck and through his determination to save them. His message to them—“We will not desert you”—is a promise he keeps against all costs, following the wreck for “three days and would not give up.” There is also a sense, not unintentional, I think, in which the skipper’s promise to the victims is like a promise made between lovers: the skipper was, as Whitman says, “faithful of days and faithful of nights.” If you think about the skipper as a lover, and his rescue of the victims an expression of that love, then I think you begin to have a clue about Whitman’s relationship to this little story and what the secret of “Space and Time” (from the very beginning of the section) might be. In this section, Whitman begins to understand the universality of his poetic impulse; the secret that he guessed (“now I see it is true, what I guess'd at, / What I guess'd when I loaf'd on the grass”) is that through his poetic sensibility he transcends the limits of space and time, and is, in effect, omnipresent (“I am afoot with my vision,” he says).


This explains the odd sense of detachment there is in the way Whitman handles the story of the skipper. He is a hero, but his story is less a story of how his bravery saved people from certain death and more an example of the essential universality of the poetic impulse. The skipper does “save the drifting company at last,” but the triumph is Whitman’s: “All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine.” The skipper’s heroism is merged with Whitman’s poetic spirit; the triumph, ultimately, is the triumph of Whitman’s poetic ambition.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more